[As RHEL licensing has changed over time, please don't attempt to answer these questions unless either you are confident of the answer, or you have recent experience with these items.]

BACKGROUND:

We are virtualizing our data center. We have a total of 23 HP blade units (2-sockets each) that will have hundreds of potential RHEL 6 virtual machines running on them within VMWare. All of these VMs (Set 'X') will need to have rhn_register run on them so that patches and updates can be routinely applied. A subset of X - call it set 'A' - of these VMs will require 12x5 support (Standard Support) from Redhat. Another subset of X - call it set B - which is mutually exclusive from set A, will require 24x7 support. For any given server, we can not yet identify which will be in Set A, Set B, or just in X alone.

QUESTIONS:

- If we decided we had no need for phone or web support, but wanted to be able to use RHN for patches, would purchasing one Self-Support entitlement for each VM suffice?

- We are probably looking at the Unlimited-number-of-guest-OS subscriptions. Is there any way to purchase Premium (24x7) support for some VMs and Standard (12x5) for others? Does the count have to be decided ahead of time, or can we decide on the fly?

In other words, can we wait until a VM crashes over the weekend to call Redhat and say "We need this VM on premium support" ?

The motivation for this inquiry is that we don't have the budget to put 23 blade units' worth of VMs under premium, or even standard support. I'm curious how Redhat manages this, since subscriptions are done per physical server, not per VM. (When you're dealing with the unlimited-number-of-VM pricing.)

I was hoping maybe we could order J number of standard subscriptions, and K number of premiums to help save money?

It's a grey and confusing area. I would most appreciate comments from anyone with recent experience.

Thanks!

Best thing you can do would be to contact RedHat sales, and ask them. Pricing will vary wildly, depending on how many licenses you really want, anticipated growth, etc. They could cut you a deal, depending on your needs. If you need 100 licenses, probably not...if you're talking about 5,000 from day one, with more to come, they'll be MUCH more likely to give you better pricing.

The people with the best knowledge of RHEL pricing are, oddly enough, the people at RedHat.